For All Mankind’s ‘Race for the Base’ could soon become reality

Image: NASA Apple TV’s For All Mankind original series portrayed an alternative timeline of our own: what if the Soviets made it to the Moon first? That simple question, with storytelling rooted in actual science, was supposed to have fun at a time that could have been, but might have actually precluded a real-world reality. In For All Mankind’s timeline, the Soviet Union landed the first man on the Moon in 1969, followed by NASA later that year. This simple switch in the timeline threw the entire Space Race on its head, with NASA needing to one-up its political rivals with a lunar base. In reality, the Soviet Union gave up on beating the Americans to landing a man on the Moon and instead focused on robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and even Venus. The success of Apollo 11 and the failure of the Soviet Union to compete culminated in a reduction in NASA funding and the eventual cancellation of the Apollo program after Apollo 17. However, in For All Mankind’s world, NASA’s funding ... Read full article.